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Advances in genetics, such as the Human Genome Project's successful mapping of the human genome and the discovery of ever more sites of disease-related mutations, invite re-examination of basic concepts underlying our fundamental social practices and institutions. Having children, assigning responsibility, identifying causes, using social and scientific resources to improve human well-being, among other concepts, will never be the same. Our concepts of moral and legal responsibility, cause and effect, disease prevention, health, disability, enhancement, personal identity, and reproductive autonomy and responsibility are all subtly changing in response to developments in genetics. Biology, law, medicine, and other disciplines are also evolving in response to mutating concepts in genetics itself-for example, dominance, causation, behavior, gene expression, and gene. The selections in this volume employ philosophical and historical perspectives to shed light on classic social, ethical, and philosophical issues raised with renewed urgency against the backdrop of the mapping of the human genome.
List of contents
One: Historical Reflections on Core Concepts.- The Classical Gene: Its Nature and Its Legacy.- Dissolving Dominance.- Flies, Genes, and Brains: Oskar Vogt, Nicolai Timofeeff-Ressovsky, and the Origin of the Concepts of Penetrance and Expressivity.- From Reproductive Responsibility to Reproductive Autonomy.- Two: Perspectives from the Philosophy of Science.- Understanding Genetic Causation and Its Implications for Ethical Issues Concerning Medical Genetics.- Reduction Reconceptualized: Cystic Fibrosis as a Paradigm Case for Molecular Medicine.- Scylla and Charybdis: Adaptationism, Reductionism, and the Fallacy of Equating Race with Disease.- Behavior as Affliction: Common Frameworks of Behavior Genetics and Its Rivals.- Three: Explorations of Ethical, Social, and Legal Consequences.- The Morality of Prenatal Testing and Selective Abortion: Clarifying the Expressivist Objection.- Meliorism at the Millennium: Positive Molecular Eugenics and the Promise of Progress without Excess.- Personal Identity and the Moral Appraisal of Prenatal Therapy.- Conceptual and Moral Problems of Genetic and Non-Genetic Preventive Interventions.- Unraveling the Codes: The Dialectic between Knowledge of the Moral Person and Knowledge of the Genetic Person in Criminal Law.- Notes on Contributors.
Summary
Advances in genetics, such as the Human Genome Project's successful mapping of the human genome and the discovery of ever more sites of disease-related mutations, invite re-examination of basic concepts underlying our fundamental social practices and institutions. Having children, assigning responsibility, identifying causes, using social and scientific resources to improve human well-being, among other concepts, will never be the same. Our concepts of moral and legal responsibility, cause and effect, disease prevention, health, disability, enhancement, personal identity, and reproductive autonomy and responsibility are all subtly changing in response to developments in genetics. Biology, law, medicine, and other disciplines are also evolving in response to mutating concepts in genetics itself-for example, dominance, causation, behavior, gene expression, and gene. The selections in this volume employ philosophical and historical perspectives to shed light on classic social, ethical, and philosophical issues raised with renewed urgency against the backdrop of the mapping of the human genome.
